It just occurred to me that the proper spelling is not “knitwit”. Doh.
Are lice a taboo topic where you come from? I’d never given them, nor their influence on the language, much thought until forced to do so by recent events.
Nitwit, nitpick, etc.
Gamma’s Kindergarten lady just called and said they’d checked the kids for lice again, just to be sure and found no live ones on her, but did see a few nits in her hair and was it okay to spray her. Sure, I said, spray her. Who cares if it’s a neurotoxin, as long as it kills lice, man.
Agenda for tonight: bathe Gamma, wash her hair with special shampoo, give a special beauty rinse with vinegar to dislodge any remaining nits, find the fine-toothed nit comb and somehow convince this long- and tangle-haired girl to let me apply it.
Screams fill our place when the kid gets her hair washed (aaaiiiiahahhhaaaaaa!! stop! too hot! enough! stop! too cold! enough! my eyes! stop! my ears!) and combed (ooowwwwwww! aaiiiiiiiiii! stop! owwww!). And it’s not even a nit comb, just baby shampoo and a stupid brush. She looks like Goldilocks when she’s finished, but she screams like the three bears. I’m trying to interest her in Sinead O’Connor.
Eh, Gamma’s just decided she wants to grow her hair even longer, so we’re dealing with the transitional bangs-thing now. She’s also, currently, a big fan of big-hair singers, like Shakira.
We’re a thick-haired bunch of people, so we battled tangles througout childhood. The one thing I lived in absolute fear of was the dreaded DeTangler, an electric comb with two vibrating blades. It hurt like hell. I grea adapt at presenting a silky-smoth layer of hair over an absolute rats nest of tangles.